The present disclosure relates to an apparatus and method for controlling data flows for multiple paths in a communication system.
A transmission control protocol (TCP) is a transmission protocol that is used for non-real-time services such as a hyper text transfer protocol (HTTP) for web browsing, a file transfer protocol (FTP) and an Internet message access protocol (IMAP), and real-time services such as a multimedia streaming service. The TCP may be established between a client (e.g., a user equipment (UE)) and a server to perform retransmission, flow control and congestion control for data in order to improve the reliability of the Internet protocol (IP) layer.
For a flow control, a receiving node may control a transmitting node so as to transmit only the data, the amount of which corresponds to a capacity of a buffer. Therefore, the transmitting node may dynamically adjust its transmission rate depending on an acknowledgement transmitted from the receiving node. For a congestion control, the transmitting node may use a supplied window with the size that the receiving node has for the buffer in order to determine a congestion window (CW) controlled by slow start and congestion control algorithm and to determine the amount of data that the transmitting node can transmit.
Recently, due to an increase in terminals with multiple interfaces such as wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA), long term evolution (LTE) and wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi), the importance of a multipath transmission control protocol (MPTCP), which allows a transport layer to recognize and utilize a plurality of network links, has been highlighted.
The MPTCP is a multipath technology, the standardization of which has recently been completed by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Such multipath technology may also be used to configure a multipath TCP session by configuring a plurality of sub-flows at the same time using multiple network addresses between communication nodes.
As to the characteristics of the MPTCP, since the MPTCP is configured based on the TCP, the MPTCP may basically supports the TCP. However, if a TCP flow control method is applied to an MPTCP flow control method, the TCP flow control method can only control the data flow for each path, but cannot control the data flows for multiple paths at the same time.
Therefore, there is a need for a method for efficiently controlling the data flows for multiple paths at the same time in the MPTCP.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present disclosure.